Susan Higginbotham: Discovering a Story in Edward II’s Court

I’m a sucker for historical fiction, so when I heard that Susan Higginbotham was making the rounds on the book-lovin’ Internet, introducing readers to her second novel, Hugh and Bess, my curiosity was piqued—not least of all because, based on what I’d gleaned from my preliminary readings, she’d dialed back the “epic” approach of her first novel, taking up a secondary character from that book and looking at him through a more intimate perspective. What, I wondered, led Higginbotham to that story? She was happy to explain.

When I first encountered Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II in graduate school, my professor told us, “Every English schoolboy knows how Edward II died.” Not being English or a schoolboy, I hadn’t heard of this king before; in fact, I would have been hard pressed to name any English kings before the Henrys in Shakespeare’s history plays. I most certainly couldn’t sort them out by Roman numeral. I read the play, and like my classmates duly shuddered when poor Edward meets his dreadful (and probably apocryphal) end. Then I forgot about him.

Over fifteen years, several moves, and two children later, I was surfing the Internet one night and came across an online version of the Marlowe play. I began reading a scene here and a scene there, and soon I simply gave in and re-read the whole play from start to finish. For some inexplicable reason, what I had found merely an interesting story back in the 1980’s had become a fascinating one to me now. I don’t know why, but I like to think it was simply because I was smarter in the 2000’s than I was in the 1980’s. Maybe it was because I no longer had those 1980’s shoulder pads wearing me down.

In any case, I am one of those people who feel compelled to read everything I can on a subject in which I become interested. (There’s probably something in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders about this; I’m better off not checking.) My quest for reading about all things Edward II soon took me to the local university library, and that’s where I discovered the tragic Despenser family, the most famous of whom were the father-and-son favorites of Edward II. From the thirteenth-century Hugh le Despenser, who fell in battle at Evesham beside Simon de Montfort, to the fifteenth-century Richard le Despenser, who died at age 18, each Despenser heir had died violently, young, or both.

My interest in the Despenser family had coincided with my newfound interest in fiction writing. As I began looking for information about the family, I discovered Eleanor de Clare, wife to Hugh le Despenser the younger and niece to Edward II. Her story, which took her on several revolutions of Fortune’s Wheel, begged to be told, and it turned into my first published novel, The Traitor’s Wife. (Along the way, I finally got all of my King Henrys and King Edwards straight. I still have trouble with the Georges.)

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8 August 2009 | guest authors |

Support the Asian American Writers’ Workshop

“You are a reader at a time when most Americans no longer read for fun. You are the one who stay up past your bedtime, devouring stories and poems. And you’re not just any kind of reader. You are a reader of Asian American literature, even though less than one percent of books are written by Asian Americans.”

I recently received an email from Ken Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, about what the organization’s accomplished in the last year, and what he hopes they’ll be able to accomplish in the near future. In 2008, for example, the AAWW hosted more than 120 authors at various literary events—more than they’d had in the previous two years combined! They’re planning a literary festival for this winter. They’re aiming to create storytelling workshops in New York City’s outer boroughs. They’re planning to become not just an invaluable resource for Asian American writers in New York, but across the United States.

With that in mind, the AAWW has begun a $130,000 fundraising drive. They’ve already reached 20 percent of that goal in the last month, and I’m hoping to put something together for this fall that will bring them even closer (more on that when I have something to report!), but in the meantime, I hope you’ll consider contributing. The Beatrice reading series has always enjoyed a significant overlap with the AAWW community, and I hope you’ll agree with me about the importance of having an organization strong enough to support more Asian American writers as they work on sharing their stories with readers.

5 August 2009 | uncategorized |